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Oct 26, 2006

misc: they say that time changes things...

... but you actually have to change them yourself... -warhol
you may have heard that daylight saving time is changing some of its parameters. in case you haven't heard, you should read more about it. in summary, we'll get four more weeks of daylight saving time: three weeks earlier (second sunday in march) and one week later (first sunday in november). go thank your congressman and the energy policy act.
just so we're all on the same page, a computer keeps time in gmt format and uses the time zone offset to display the correct time. this means, you can't just sync time on a client and expect that the client will know about the new time zone parameters.
the pertinence of a change of this magnitude is that your windows systems contain timezone data that is coded to increase/decrease the time by an hour based on currently known parameters. the other real problem is that microsoft (to date) has no plans to release a patch to address windows 2000 systems for the adjustments in dst. don't think it's a problem? wait until you see how outlook behaves... (think back to the australian 2006 commonwealth games).
after november 6, 2006 ... for all of your systems above version 2000, apply the patch (once tested thoroughly, etc, etc, etc). for your windows 2000 systems, try one of these: using tzedit and create a .reg file of the dst changes outlined in this kb article and distribute. the folks at eeye have posted the contents of a .reg file which can also be used to accomplish the same thing. i'm not sure how long it'll stay around, so i've posted the contents of it below.
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\TimeZones\Alaskan Standard Time]
"TZI"=hex:1c,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,c4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,0b,00,00,00,01,00,02,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,02,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\TimeZones\Central Standard Time]
"TZI"=hex:68,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,c4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,0b,00,00,00,01,00,02,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,02,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\TimeZones\Eastern Standard Time]
"TZI"=hex:2c,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,c4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,0b,00,00,00,01,00,02,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,02,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\TimeZones\Mountain Standard Time]
"TZI"=hex:a4,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,c4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,0b,00,00,00,01,00,02,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,02,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\TimeZones\Pacific Standard Time]
"TZI"=hex:e0,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,c4,ff,ff,ff,00,00,0b,00,00,00,01,00,02,\
00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,02,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
"DaylightStart"=hex:00,00,03,00,02,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
"StandardStart"=hex:00,00,0b,00,01,00,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
if you copy paste the snippet above and don't have any leading spaces on the lines that start with "00," (underneath "TZI"), put two spaces before "00,". i'm not sure if it's actually necessary... but blogger loves to strip off leading spaces.